Currently lenticular screen-type multi-view 3D image is produced by composing a sequence of strip-like images to be viewed under a lenticular screen. The compressed images are composed from a series of images taken by a number of cameras at different viewing angles. As shown in FIG. 1, three cameras or camera lenses with associated image sensors are used to take the pictures of an object to produce three component images: a left image L, a center image C, and a right image R. Each of the component images is divided into a plurality of image strips and the image strips from all the component images are arranged into a composite image for display. A lenticular screen is imposed over the display such that each lenticule substantially covers a strip of the composite image that includes an image strip from each of all the component images. In FIG. 1, the composite image strip is referred to as an interlaced stereopair image. Through each lenticule of the lenticular screen, the left eye of a view can see the image strip from the left image and the right eye of the viewer can see the image strip from the right image. As such, the viewer sees a 3D image of the object.
The disadvantages of the current method of composing a 3D image for viewing include:
1. Complicated process in the making of the composite image;
2. The multi-camera lenses must be substantially identical so as to produce the component images of same size and shade—the camera lenses must have identical focal length and the image sensors must have the same color balance, etc.
3. A multi-lens camera with fixed separation of lenses is usually not suitable for taking pictures of an image at a close-up object because the parallax between images will be too great.